A_kenney_JFS_REALLYFINAL.qxd 10/8/01 11:37 PM Page 20 SUNSTONE By birth and temperament, Joseph F. Smith was destined for prominence. He was of the “royal lineage”—nephew of the Prophet Joseph and son of the Patriarch Hyrum—and his zeal for the Restoration never wavered. Whatever privileges may have accrued to him from his parentage were surpassed in spades by the trials he suffered as a young man. Combined, they produced a complex and very human being. BEFORE THE BEARD: TRIALS OF THE YOUNG JOSEPH F. S MITH By Scott G. Kenney Joseph F. Smith, circa 1858 Joseph F. Smith, circa 1905 PAGE 20 NOVEMBER 2001 A_kenney_JFS_REALLYFINAL.qxd 10/8/01 11:37 PM Page 21 SUNSTONE E IS THE MAN WITH THE LONG BEARD WHOSE clasped her arms around his head, turned his pale face we have been looking at for the past two years on face upon her heaving bosom, and then a gushing, H the cover of the 2000–01 Priesthood and Relief plaintive wail burst forth from her lips: “Oh! Hyrum, Society manual. He is Joseph F. Smith, son of Hyrum and Mary Hyrum! Have they shot you, my dear Hyrum—are Fielding Smith, sixth president of the Church (1901–18), and you dead, my dear Hyrum!” She drew him closer and the father of the tenth, Joseph Fielding Smith. He was born in closer to her bosom, kissed his pale lips and face, put Far West, Missouri, two weeks after the Haun’s Mill massacre, her hands on his brow and brushed back his hair. Her and he died in Salt Lake City eight days after the end of World grief seemed to War I. consume her, and President Smith’s accomplishments are remarkable. He hus- she lost all power of “They banded five large families and steered Mormonism into a safe utterance. and uncontested position in American culture He defined the Her two daugh- turned to nature of Mormonism sans theocracy, cooperatives, and ters and two young polygamy. He is truly the father of modern Mormonism. children clung, one But his many triumphs cannot be appreciated without un- some around her another derstanding in like measure the trials and inner struggles he neck and some to endured. I hope this portrayal will be a step toward an honest her body, falling alternately and empathetic portrait of the young Joseph F. Smith, of the prostrate upon the man before the beard. corpse, and shriek- crying, ing in the wildness “My “. stupified with horror” of their wordless grief.3 husband, ARLY IN THE morning, five-year-old Joseph heard tap- At 7 the next morning, ping at his mother’s bedroom window, then a man’s new coffins lined with fine my husband E voice from outside. His father was dead. Uncle Joseph, white linen and covered in too.” “My too. A mob had rushed the jail and shot them. Mary screamed black velvet were ready. The in anguished denial, then began to sob uncontrollably. bodies were laid inside, and father in As word spread, friends and relatives began to call—among protective squares of glass them, B. W. Richmond, a non-Mormon staying at the Mansion covered the faces. Then the blood.” House.1 He described the scene: coffins were put into pine “And my [Mary] had gathered her . children into the sitting boxes and set on tables for room and the youngest about four years old sat on her the public viewing.4 father is lap. The poor and disabled that fed at the table of her In late June, on the banks husband, had come in and formed a group of about of the Mississippi River, the dead too,” twenty about the room. They were all sobbing and fog lifts early, and tempera- and weeping, each expressing his grief in his own peculiar tures rise rapidly. In the way. Mrs. Smith seemed stupified with horror. Mansion House, decom- “My Sons, Joseph recalled, “It was a misty, foggy morning. Everything posing flesh generated pu- looked dark and gloomy and dismal.”2 trid gases, and the corpses my sons.” About three in the afternoon, two wagons bearing the mar- swelled. By noon, Hyrum’s tyrs reached the outskirts of town. Eight to ten thousand dis- face was nearly unrecognizable, his neck and face forming one traught mourners lined the streets. When the wagons reached bloated mass. Although the gunshot wounds had been filled the Mansion House, the rough pine coffins were unloaded and with cotton, blood and other fluids oozed out, trickling down carried into the dining room. The families were asked to wait to the floor and puddling across the room. outside until the bodies could be cleaned. When they were al- “Kneeling in a pool of the comingling dripping gore of the lowed in, Martyrs on the floor,” Dan Jones wrote, Mary, Emma, several of [Mary] trembled at every step, and nearly fell, but the children in their care, and Lucy turned to one another al- reached her husband’s body, kneeling down by him, ternately crying, “‘My husband, my husband too.’ ‘My father SCOTT KENNEY is a technical writer and historian STYLE NOTE : Paragraphing has often been added to quo- living in Alpine, Utah. An earlier draft of this article tations; punctuation has been standardized; original spelling was presented at the 1999 Salt Lake Sunstone has been retained except all sentences begin with a capital Symposium (Tape #SL99-325). An expanded ver- letter and names are consistently capitalized. Underlined or sion can be found in the “articles” section of Scott’s all-caps words denoting emphasis are italicized instead. website, www.saintswithouthalos.com. Interlinear additions are enclosed in slashes (/.../). NOVEMBER 2001 PAGE 21 A_kenney_JFS_REALLYFINAL.qxd 10/8/01 11:37 PM Page 22 SUNSTONE in blood.’ ‘And my father is dead too,’ and ‘My son, my sons.’”5 cloud seemed to overshadow Bro. Smith and he asked A mixture of tar, vinegar, and sugar was kept burning on how this man looked upon the deed. Bro. Smith was the stove lest the stench overwhelm the visitors, who, oppressed by a most horrible feeling as he waited for “tracking their feet in the a reply. After a brief pause the man answered, “Just as prophet’s blood” passed I have always looked upon it—that it was a d----d through the apartments “from cold-blooded murder.” The cloud immediately lifted “He found morning till night . and in from Bro. Smith and he found that he had his open the house for the live-long day pocket knife grasped in his hand in his pocket and he that he the lament of sorrow was believes that had this man given his approval to that heard.”6 murder of the prophets, he would have immediately had his At 5 P.M., the doors finally struck him to the heart.9 open closed, and the families took their final farewells. Mary lifted “. I felt mighty big about it, I tell you” pocket Joseph up to look upon the faces of his father and the FTER THE MARTYRDOM, Hyrum’s widow, Mary knife Prophet, for the last time.7 Fielding, was the sole care-giver and provider. His grasped Peering through the glass, he A oldest child had married four days before the mur- saw faces once so familiar, now ders, but Hyrum’s brother Samuel H. died on July 30. His in his distended and ashen, their jaws pregnant wife, Levira, needed help, so Mary took in three of his tied shut, cotton stuffed into five children.10 It is little wonder that Joseph’s sister Martha hand in the bullet hole at the base of his Ann recalled their mother “seldom smiled,” and getting her to his pocket father’s nose. laugh was “quite a feat.”11 Joseph retained few memo- Emma, Mother Smith, and many of the Smith family re- and he ries of his father, but his moth- mained in Nauvoo; but Mary, her older brother, Joseph er’s lifting him to see Hyrum’s Fielding, and younger sister, Mercy, decided to follow Brigham believes body was one of them. At five, Young. When William, the only surviving Smith brother, that had he could not fully understand learned that Mary had permitted her step-son, John, to join the meaning of death. The an- the vanguard in February, he furiously berated her for siding this man guish in his mother’s voice, the with Young against the rest of the family. Listening upstairs, sight of his father’s and Uncle Joseph “longed for age and maturity in order that he might de- given his Joseph’s barely recognizable fend his helpless mother from such unwarranted and bitter as- approval bodies, the stench—it was no saults.”12 At eight, he felt keenly it was his role to protect his doubt a traumatic day. And not mother and family. to that only on that day, but for many The family left Nauvoo in September 1846, crossing the days following, the sorrow, Mississippi just hours before the cannonading of Nauvoo com- murder of anger, and fear of the entire menced. Then Joseph drove a team three hundred miles to the community reinforced the hor- Winter Quarters. “I never got stuck once and I never tipped rendous nature of his father’s the wagon over, I never broke a tongue or reach or wreched a prophets, murder. How could the experi- wheel,” he crowed. “I got through the journey just as well as ence not have a lasting effect? the old men who drove the teams and I felt mighty big about he would When he was twenty-one, it, I tell you.”13 have im- Joseph returned to Nauvoo for Two horrid winters followed at Winter Quarters.